Tagging & folksonomies

I have used Delicious before, so looked out my username and password details to revisit some of the URL's and tags that I had saved there (I am getting used to writing all these usernames and passwords down now, wish there was some sort of universal login for web 2.0 applications).

My primary aim for using Delicious the first time around was to explore how it may be used for information literacy (see previous post), however I did think it would be useful to put together for example a lists of web resources for students after an information literacy session. I have now explored the use of creating bundles of URL's using tags to indicate which areas you want to include in the bundles, this may be useful for my housing and planning students who use a lot of official publications freely available on the web - especially as I am plaaning on weeding the print collection we currently have in the library.

Here are a couple of my bundles:
http://www.delicious.com/emmamires/bundle:E-learning
http://www.delicious.com/emmamires/bundle:Induction

Create your own search engine

Photo credit: by Jack Delano used under creative commons, coutesy of Library of Congress LC-USW36-645

The thing for this post is to create your own search engine using Rollyo which is a way of setting up customizable topical searches. I created a searchroll for my ABE blog but on quite a small scale (I only added in three websites), considering that this blog is supposed to support three departments the 25 limit on total URL's may prove too restrictive.

With an IL head on I was pondering whether any use could be made of these tools for this end - I remember that I used to deliver a session split over two days where I would ask students to go away and evaluate some websites using the accuracy, objectivity, currency, authority etc. and then report back on their evaluations. Perhaps I could have created a searchroll of sites and then asked students to search for a topic and identify credible sites out of the results...or perhaps I am just looking for novel ways to reinvent the wheel...

Being your own librarian

I set up a LibraryThing account for my Resources for Architecture and the Built Environment blog, and use it for adding new titles I have ordered for the library and like the visual element it adds to the blog.

I have to admit that I haven't explored the full functionality in terms of tagging, reviewing, recommendations etc. but do intend to look at the tagging option inparticular to tag books with courses, module codes, subjects etc.


Here is my LibraryThing account.

Wordle

I have used Wordle before but more as a way of creating something visually out of textual information.

I have considered in the past the use of tag clouds and tagging/folksonomies in info literacy as a way of of creating an interactive exercise which encourages students to assess and evaluate their search terminologies. I thought about using a bookmarking tool like delicious to save an article in and then ask students to access and tag with keywords they feel are appropriate to describe the topic, the tag cloud produced by the keywords could then perhaps be evaluated to see if it is representative of the topic.

I am yet to try this out though.

Image generators - Cool text

Similarly to most other comments regarding Cool Text, I found this to be the least useful and very outdated in style and appearence and reminds me of some of the early luridly coloured websites that you would commonly come across on the web.

Big Huge Labs was quite easy to use and I liked the way you could conect easily to other web services like facebook and flickr, this has potential for repurposing your own work in a number of ways and I think I may well use this again for brightening up blog posts.

Letter James, what I liked about this was the ability to personalise images and again I would use this I feel to add relevancy to the group of users I am addressing in the blog, rather than a generalised image.

Image generators - Big Huge Labs

Image generators - letter james